White corridor (27 page)

‘Except that we would have found Lilith’s body on the table, not in the drawer, wouldn’t we, Giles? I know you came back to Bayham Street because you called me from there at eleven thirty-five
A.M
., and I arrived ten minutes later. Another omission.’

Kershaw rubbed his face with his long fingers. ‘I was taken aback when Oswald asked me to help him. He was a scientist who believed that ethical issues had little relevance to his work. But Bryant was always going on to him about discovering a moral dimension to crime. And now he had come face-to-face with a genuine moral dilemma: to respect the wishes of the dead and thus help the living, or to stubbornly stick to the letter of the law and hurt everyone. I had never seen him so confused. I went out for a coffee and came back at eleven-twenty
A.M
. to reassure Oswald that he was doing the right thing, and instead I found him dead. It didn’t take me long to see what had happened, and I knew that anyone else arriving would quickly figure out the truth. So I put Lilith Starr’s body back in the drawer and locked it. We would assume, rightly, that Finch had suffered heart failure. Attention would be drawn away from the girl he had decided to protect, and I would have honoured his final wish. But as soon as I saw the bruises coming up on his neck and chest, I was faced with a dilemma of my own: to conceal them and start compounding the lie, or to report the facts and let everyone else decide what had happened. I thought about Finch’s professional opinion of me, and knew what he would have expected me to do. I didn’t obstruct, Janice, I just omitted. Now I’ve failed to carry out his wishes, as well as destroying my own career.’

Longbright reached out a tentative hand in sympathy. ‘No, Giles, you behaved honourably, and I know Arthur will consider that to be your saving grace. He worked the whole thing out while he was four hundred miles away, sitting in a snowdrift, but he wanted us to decide what action to take. I think I can answer that now. We’ll continue to honour Oswald’s wish, and close the case. You see, it was me who refused to countersign your application for Oswald’s position. But now, I’m ready to recommend you.’

‘Thank you, Janice.’ Giles raised his head and smiled ruefully at her. ‘I won’t let any of you down, I promise. What amazes me is how Arthur figured out the truth.’

‘Oh, he’ll have read the answer in some dusty old book,’ said Longbright, smiling to herself.

47

THE CONSPIRACY OF MEN

Arthur Bryant stood at the dark tunnel entrance and listened. The reflected light from the snow only lit the first five feet of the track, and he had left the Valiant, May’s trusty cinema torch, on the dashboard of the van. He looked back at Ryan, anchored to the bushes, and slowly advanced into darkness.

He heard dripping water, a click of flint. There was a scuffling sound somewhere ahead of him, a brush of material against rough brick. He was now moving in total darkness. By sliding one foot before the other around the edges of the sleepers, he was able to avoid the rails, staying close against the right-hand wall of the tunnel.

‘I know you’re there,’ Bryant called gently. ‘And I think I know the truth about you.’

There was a fresh sound of displaced gravel, much closer now. He stopped and listened to someone else’s ragged breathing. He was wondering whether to go further, and suddenly realised that he was afraid. Not for himself—death had long since ceased to hold any terrors—but because something was very wrong, and had been for a while now.
This,
he thought,
is my hour of reckoning, the descent of my black angel.

He took a step forward, then another, still feeling for the edges of the sleepers. The bitter blanket of blackness pressed in on him, for it was even colder in the tunnel than it had been outside. It seemed that he could smell the cuprous tang of metal and coal-soot, although no steam trains had passed through here in decades.

His right boot pressed against something soft. Lowering himself to a crouch, he reached forward and felt around. The body lying beside the track was still warm to the touch, but there was no longer a pulse in its wrist.

‘What are you doing?’ asked May as Maggie snatched the mobile from him.

‘Come on, we both feel it,’ she told him, ‘a deviant force at work, trying to fool us into making a mistake. We can’t fight it alone, two elderly men and a crazy lady of a certain age coping with her psychic senses and a hip replacement; we need help, so that’s what I’m going to get us.’ She punched out the number of the PCU. ‘Hello, dear, to whom am I speaking? Well, if it’s a wrong number why did you answer the phone? Anyway, it’s not; get me April on the phone, would you? John May’s granddaughter—yes, I suppose that does make her name April May. Well, she probably never told you because she was embarrassed.’ She pursed her lips at the phone. ‘This is no laughing matter, young man, put me through at once!’

‘Got her,’ said April, running down the list of names on her computer with the phone propped under her chin. ‘Kate Summerton went to jail on seven counts of fraud the first time in 1998, second time for receiving stolen goods and intent to deceive in 2002. Address, twenty-four Cranmere Road, Greenwich SE-10, and there’s a phone number. We’ll get someone to call her right now and put the frighteners on her. No, not literally, Maggie, it’s an expression I heard on the telly.’

‘That’s good,’ said Maggie. ‘I thought you were referring to shape-shifters.’

April jotted down the number, tore off the strip of paper, and passed it to Bimsley. ‘I hear Uncle Arthur managed to resolve our investigation at Bayham Street. Perhaps we can return the compliment and do the same with his. Colin, we need everything you can get on a Madeline Gilby, she’s a client of this woman.’

Meera came into April’s office with a folded page in her hand. ‘Your grandfather wants a check run for these names on your ICDb,’ she explained. ‘He’s on the line, waiting for an answer. They’re all supposed to be victims of the bloke they’re looking for on Dartmoor. Can you do it right now?’

April looked at the piece of paper. ‘This is an Indian takeaway menu,’ she said.

‘Other side.’

April turned the sheet over and entered the names into the International Criminal Database:
Pascal Favier, Patrice Bezard, Johann Bellocq, Edward Winthrop, Paulo Escobar, Pierre Castel
.

She took Meera’s phone and transferred it to a speaker while she typed. ‘Easy, Granddad, they’re coming up on my screen, all well-known cases by the look of it. Johann Bellocq was born in Marseilles, then moved to the family home near the village of Roquebrune, Alpes-Maritimes, charged with manslaughter for beating his mother to death in March 1986, but the judge commuted his sentence to a stay in a mental hospital due to the extenuating circumstances of the case, which he called “devastatingly sad.” Bellocq was released five years later. Bezard was executed in Normandy for the murder of his wife in 1945, likewise Escobar for the same crime in Paris in 1958. Winthrop was a lawyer murdered by his client, Pascal Favier, in 2004 in Marseilles; they never caught Favier. Castel was jailed for the murder of his mother in La Rochelle in 1976. They’re all in a book,
Famous French Trials of the 20
^th
Century
by Edith Corbeau, published in France two years ago by J’ai Lu, currently available here in paperback from Transworld.’

‘My God,’ said May. ‘I’ve just seen that book today. Madeline Gilby had a copy of it in her handbag.’ He broke the connection, pocketed the mobile, and turned his attention to opening the envelope Madeline had left in her Toyota’s wheel arch.

He found himself looking at Johann’s old passport, its expiry dated for August the previous year, and ten colour photographs, scenic postcard views of different gardens in bloom at the Villa Rothschild. ‘She lied to us,’ he said. ‘There are no murder victims here.’

‘No, she didn’t lie. I think she genuinely believed she could see them,’ said Maggie. ‘I told you, Madeline is convinced that she has the gift of second sight. Her reality is not yours or mine.’

‘Then Arthur is in the gravest possible situation.’ May grabbed Maggie’s hand, pushing on towards the distant tunnel.

The ringing telephone pierced the stillness of the terraced Edwardian house. There was a creaking of the shabby leather armchair, a shuffling of tartan slippers. A hand reached for the telephone.

‘I’m afraid Mrs Summerton is not here at present. Can I help? I’m Roger Summerton, her husband.’ He listened for a minute. ‘Yes, blond, very attractive, I remember her well. She’s often here. First came to the refuge after her husband beat her up, but she went back to him a couple of times before finally deciding on a divorce. Oh, she has a history of trouble. I think the same thing happened to her own mother, but I’m sure Mrs Summerton will be able to give you more information; she’ll be back soon.’

Bimsley scrawled down the details and passed them to April, who called her grandfather back.

John May stopped dead on the great white hill below the railway line. ‘I’m getting a message,’ he said. ‘My trousers are vibrating.’

Maggie looked delighted. ‘I knew we would make a believer of you eventually.’

‘No, a text message.’ He pulled out his mobile.

‘Honestly, you get more calls in the middle of the English countryside than you do in your office,’ the white witch complained. ‘I’m surprised anyone can ever get hold of you. And you’re slowing us down.’

‘I can’t move any faster than this,’ May replied. ‘If you were a real witch you’d take us up there by broom. Let me read this; I’m being sent important information.’

‘While your partner is risking his life,’ she tutted, pulling on his arm. ‘For heaven’s sake, come on.’

Arthur Bryant rose with creaking knees and carefully stepped around the body. He felt disembodied, faintly unwell. There was no point in remaining inside the tunnel now. Pressing his left hand against the wet wall, he slowly made his way back towards the dazzling disc of light.

When the body dropped on him with its arms locked around his shoulders, the air was crushed from his chest, and the sudden weight threw him down onto the track. The grip tightened around his neck. Bryant knew there was little point in resisting, but twisted over onto his stomach, forcing his attacker to roll onto the line.

‘What are you doing, Madeline?’ He breathed with all the calmness he could muster. The flints that surrounded the sleepers were cutting into his chest. ‘Are you going to kill me as well? You can’t take revenge on the whole of mankind.’

She was shocked to hear him address her by name, but remained silent, her hands clasped tightly around him. He wondered what she thought she was doing.

‘You shouldn’t have picked the names from your book, Madeline. It’s called
Famous Trials
because that’s exactly what they are to anyone in law enforcement. And you shouldn’t have got Ryan to lie for you. Children are always so obvious when they’ve been asked to lie for their parents. They simply can’t look you in the eye.’

They remained locked in position on the track, although she was trying to pull him further in. Bryant’s hand gripped the freezing rail. He dug his boots in against the sleeper, determined not to budge.

‘The boy whose throat you just tore open with the scissors from the Swiss Army knife you keep in your bag really is called Johann Bellocq. And a small pair of scissors is a woman’s weapon, you should know that.’

Bryant raised his chin so that he could speak more clearly. ‘In his own way, Bellocq paid for the crime he committed. He never hurt anyone but his mother, and that was after years of being locked away and tortured by her. He was a petty thief, and had borrowed cars, although he usually returned them. It’s true that when an old hunting friend of his grandfather’s died, Bellocq borrowed his house, but there was no real malice in him. Nor was there any dead body in the villa—the local gendarmerie has had a chance to visit it; in your hysteria, you merely thought you saw one. You were furious about being lied to once more, and thought that your pattern with men was starting to repeat itself all over again, but you only saw what you wanted to see. When Johann told you about his past, he was opening himself up to you because he genuinely loved you. He wanted you to know everything about him, but in your panic you shut him out and ran away, embroidering his history with lurid scraps culled from your own warped imagination.’

She was lying rigid now, breathing hard behind him, her legs wrapped around his. He tried to turn his head, to make her hear. ‘When you found the truck driver who’d given him a lift, he told you how desperate Johann was to find you, how much he said he loved you, but to you it was just further proof of the conspiracy of men. You shut out the truth, even going so far as to shut him up, slashing out at him. Do you even know that you killed him? Of course there are bad men in the world who’ll seek to harm you, Madeline, but they’re not all alike. Who made you believe they were?’

He suddenly realised why she was so still. She was listening, not to him, but to the tinging of the approaching train through the steel tracks.

From the corner of his eye he saw two silhouettes appear in the bright tunnel entrance, but before he could call out, her hand pulled hard on his scarf, tightening it over his mouth and throat until he could no longer draw breath.

I’ve forced her to realise the truth about herself,
he thought.
She’s decided she has nothing more to live for. And the trouble is, she’s going to take me with her.